Golden’s Nuggets: Jordan over LeBron no longer a no-brainer

I’ll always take Michael Jordan over LeBron James, but the pecking order has changed after numero uno.

We’re bearing witness to greatness personified.

Undeniably great, James somehow led an unspectacular group missing Kevin Love to the NBA Finals. In a stellar career, getting to an eighth straight championship series with the current crop of Cleveland Cavaliers may go down as his crowning achievement. His 35-15-9 performance in Boston in 48 minutes of Game 7 Sunday wasn’t surprising. The great ones deliver. He has more times than he hasn’t.

“I would hearken to say that no one person has ever shouldered more and gotten his team to the Finals,” ESPN color analyst Jeff Van Gundy said during the telecast.

Eight straight appearances in the NBA Finals says it all, and he did it after playing all 82 games in his 15th season.

Who’s greater? MJ or LBJ? Does it really matter? It’s starting to feel like Michael Jackson vs. Prince. There are cases to be made on both sides. For the sake of this discussion, I’ll forever take Jordan because he was always at his best during the postseason as that 6-0 record in the Finals will attest, but he had advantages. Unlike LeBron, Jordan played his entire Chicago Bulls tenure (13 seasons) with an all-time great in Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen. Also, three of his six championships came with Pippen, Hall of Fame rebounding phenom Dennis Rodman and highly regarded Ron Harper, who averaged 20 points per game five times with Cleveland before taking a supporting role with Chicago.

It’s always difficult to compare great players from different eras. How would LeBron have fared against the burly Bad Boy Detroit Pistons and the ultraphysical New York Knicks and Miami Heat teams that came after? How would Jordan have fared in the modern game that’s so dependent on 3-point shooting?

Well, MJ would have been great in any era, and James has shown us over and over that his amazing talent transcends generations.

There was a time when I placed Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ahead of James, but that time has changed. Win or lose in the Finals, LeBron is one of the two greatest players ever to dribble a basketball. There’s nothing on the floor he can’t do, and he always makes those around him better. No NBA Mount Rushmore would be credible without Jordan and James. The other two? Have at it.

Just as important, he knows his place in this game.

“I’m true to who I am,” he said. “I’m true to my family. I’m true to my teammates. I’m true to my craft, and then at the end of the day, whatever happens, happens. I know how much I put into the game and nobody can ever take that away from me.”

Just last week I was telling friends at happy hour that there was no real discussion with Jordan vs. LeBron.

I was wrong, fellas. Very wrong.

The “This is Texas Tour” drew raves in my hometown of Tyler, its last stop. The fans were pretty geeked to bounce questions off athletic director Chris Del Conte, though some had hoped to see football coach Tom Herman in the building.

Dan Toney, the former president of the Texas Exes of Smith County, told me he met with Del Conte at a Longhorn Foundation meeting last month and came away impressed with the latter’s vision, particularly his desire to put on a more united front when it comes to other departments joining athletics in representing the university.

“He said there were a lot of paddleboats working hard but not together,” Toney said. “He said he wanted to get everything headed in the right direction. I think he’s on the way to making that happen.”

The one word that best describes him is accessible. It’s an admirable trait. If anything, it reveals that Del Conte understands where Texas is on a national level. It’s a sleeping giant, and he has shown up with a truckload of wake ’em up.

Dallas could cut wideout Terrance Williams but it won’t. Williams lied to police when he said former Baylor teammate Kendall Wright wrecked his $325,000 Lamborghini early in the morning on May 19, according to his attorney. Dallas Morning News reporter Brandon George quoted Williams’ attorney as saying he was in the car alone when he crashed into a light pole. Williams was later arrested for public intoxication after he hit a curb on a motorized bicycle.

Williams isn’t really good enough for the headache he has provided the organization over the past few days, but a drunken episode isn’t nearly enough to get him run out of Dallas. Lucky for him the Cowboys are horribly deficient at his position after the departure of Dez Bryant, along with tight end Jason Witten.